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Sandbox team is hard at work on balance changes. Snipers and Shotguns will get some tweaks, making them much more viable in your power slot. Coming from a playtest yesterday, things felt pretty great!

I'll see if we can sit down with sandbox and have a TWAB segment to go over more of their work in the coming weeks. Want to make sure we're not stealing valuable time from them, though - the minutes spent typing out copy for the TWAB are minutes lost against sandbox passes.

This is their first major attempt to fix this issue, which they now fully acknowledge is a problem. If the changes on March 27 fall flat then I think we can expect some sort of slot change in the late summer/fall update. But I'm curious to see how the upcoming changes work in practice before I declare it a failure.

Unless they’re planning to remove flinch from snipers altogether (another bug they’ve acknowledged) and CRANK the precision multiplier I just don’t see the point.

I've made this comment before but in other games like Halo Sniper Rifles absolutely feel competitive with rockets. For instance in Halo 5's map "coliseum" there is a Sniper and a Rocket both spawned on the map at the same time; players will often go for the Sniper rather than the rocket.

Why? No flinch, excellent hipfire accuracy, and much more ammunition is available when you pick up the Sniper rather than the Rocket Launcher.

Bungie absolutely has the tools to make Snipers competent power weapons if they just look back at their heritage.

In PvP, maybe. But that still wouldn't make them a viable option for PvE.

There's really no way to make them a good option. And they certainly can't make it better than Destiny 1's system (because it's impossible). The only way I could see it would be if every single shotgun shot was as strong as a rocket, but the range didn't change. This would essentially make PvE a lot better, but its effects on PvP would be minimal. Same with Sniper crit-spot damage on top of making them similar to Halo's snipers (like you said: No flinch, excellent hip-fire accuracy, etc). Increasing the crit-spot damage by like 500% (AT LEAST) might make them a more viable option.

But rockets will always be the most reliable and safe bet. The only way to give players and these weapons their power back would be to bring back D1's system.

In PvP, maybe. But that still wouldn't make them a viable option for PvE.

There's really no way to make them a good option. And they certainly can't make it better than Destiny 1's system (because it's impossible)

Considering in D1 people would chose to use other things than rockets in the heavy slot (e.g. Sleeper Simulant which is a Linear Fusion) I disagree that it's impossible.

Snipers in D1 could out-DPS rockets that weren't Gjallarhorn; in D2, they can't. That's really the big difference now, it just doesn't make any sense to use a sniper in the raid or whatever because you're adding additional risk (flinch, inability to clear groups of adds) with no reward (additional DPS or total damage).

You have to remember tho man it's not as simple as putting them in the special/energy slot. Literally every enemy and encounter would have to be rebalanced around it. Also what would they do to the existing energy weapons? No one would use them over shotgun/sniper. So ether dump them in kinetic which causes bunch of issues or imo the best way to do it would be 4 weapon slots. Kinetic energy special and power. Make it so that shotguns and snipers don't have energy dmg ( this would make something like ps4 sniper more potent) and people would still use the energy weapon to take down shields and we're constantly switching are weapons. This imo is the only way it could work if they do want to remove them from the power slot.

If it doesn't happen by the September expansion it's not gonna happen in d2.

I disagree about having to balance everything, at least to an extent. Excessive balance is what is throttling this game. I say just let guardians be OP for a bit, watch data/heat maps of what’s going on, and throw some additional enemies in as necessary.

They have to do something about this tho, and I think much faster than September. Playing any activity other than the main campaign with this loadout system is just a slog.

They will do nothing. They will never change the loadout system for Destiny 2 so stop hoping for this.
All they can do is change ammo economy and weapon damage so the shotgun/sniper/fusion/GL will become more desirable compared to rockets.

Dump the energy weapons back into kinetic. Just remove the elemental damage. They could call it the "Primary" slot.

Ripping shields off with a special was a lot of fun in D1 PVE. Primary for standard enemies, and special for shielded. It felt a lot better than slowly whittling away a shield with the current energy weapons

Better yet, keep the kinetic/elemental mods, allow them to be applied to any primary. If you pick kinetic, you get a 10% damage buff. If you pick elemental, you get shield shredding explosions and super shutdown in PvP. It's the exact same balance compromise they've already established as "ok" with our current weapon system, so I see no problem.

The longer they take to make underlying changes, the harder it is to make them. Players have clearly stated that they want D1's weapon system back. We have said that way more times than we have said that shotguns and snipers are bad in D2. But they chose to only listen to that last part, because they WANT TO MAKE IT WORK. It's obvious from all the feedback we're getting from them that they are pushing this new system as hard as they can.

I honestly think that people will grow tired from complaining about the slots, and when somehow they make Shotguns and Snipers work in PvE (which is definitely where they need to be tuned the most, because they are absolutely useless there), people will just accept it. At that point, Destiny 2 will most likely be in a good place, and this new system will become part of the franchise (for balancing sake).

I never hoped I was more wrong than right now, but that's my honest opinion on the matter. I really hope I'm wrong...

The issue isn't that we need shotguns or snipes, it's that there's literally zero reason to ever use one. I haven't equipped a shotgun or sniper in months. I've equipped a sniper one time for two rounds before ditching it. That the problem, we have entire weapon classes that are utterly useless in the game. That's bad game design and is caused by having those weapon classes compete with other classes that they shouldn't be competing with.

Alternative power weapons are completely usable in every PvE activity except Prestige modes. I find shotguns much more useful than rockets in Argos phase 1 for example; fusion rifles are perfectly good for yellow-bar melting (Merciless is in it's own league for Strike bosses).

I've never been a sniper guy though, so I wouldn't equip those even if they were great.

Looks great for D2, right? Wrong, because Scout/AR is the same as AR/Scout, and Scout/Scout or AR/AR are also not 'variety', and there are also loadouts like SMG/Sidearm or Scout/Pulse that are just plain useless and again don't add variety. Plus the fact that snipers and GL are practically useless in the game currently, and you start getting a lot less 'unique' loadouts.

In D1 every weapon type is unique and useful, and pretty much every possible combination is a unique and useful loadout. You have 4 x 4 x 3 = 48 completely unique loadouts. In D2 you have four useful power weapons (Rocket, Fusion, Shotgun, and Swords) and a handful of useful Kinetic/Energy combinations (Scout/AR, Scout/HC, Scout/[SMG/sidearm], Pulse/HC, Pulse/[SMG/Sidearm], AR/HC, AR/[SMG/Sidearm], HC/[SMG/Sidearm]), that's 4 x 8 = 32 'unique' loadouts. So not only are there less unique loadouts, they are less fun/interesting/powerful than most of the combinations from D1.

You say this, then proceed to change the numbers based on your opinion because you realized you were wrong from "a numbers perspective".

I've done this calculation multiple times, I really should just save the comment so I can copy paste.

To simplify I'll use the categories you outlined.

D1 has 4 primary options, 4 special options, and 3 heavy options

4x4x3= 48 unique combinations

D2 has 6 kinetic options, 6 energy options and 6 heavy options

6x6x6= 216 combinations, but they're not necessarily unique. To do that, we have to remove all examples that include duplicate kinetic/energy as well as inverse pairs (HC kinetic and SMG energy is the same as SMG kinetic HC energy)

To do this, we first find the number of non-dupes. Which is 6x5x6=180

Half of all primary combos will just be the inverse pair, so we can figure that out with:

[(6x5)/2]x6= 90 unique combinations almost double D1

You can't remove things from the calculation just because you don't like them.

The issue we are discussing is the amount of load out options, not the usefulness of the weapons. If we have more choice than D1 we should keep that. We just need to buff things so that all weapons are worth choosing, which doesn't require a change in the weapon category system.

Definitely getting downvoted for this but even though I agree that shotguns and rockets should be separate I would choose a fusion/shotgun or sniper any day over a rocket in PvP. A rocket might get you an easy kill but with the other power weapons you can get up to 4. Notice how the good players in PvP very rarely use rockets (or Colony for that matter)?

For PvE rockets and shotguns do not belong in the same slot period. It’s in PvE you really see the problem with the weapon system we have now. But as I said, in PvP I think a shotgun or fusion is better than a rocket launcher. But there’s other factors that needs to be taken into the game too like the hero moments we had way more often in D1 because of special weapons, but that’s another discussion.

If they made the ammo aconomy adequate and make them competitive within their role as a power weapon I don't see any reason to not use them outside preference. Part of the problem is just that they're too weak too little damage and everything else to compete with the other options.

In pve they absolutely need more ammo and power. They simply don't offer what the other choices do. Like rockets. Lol.

Because Snipers are high-single target damage while Rockets are slow firing, AoE machines that can be avoided, and Shotguns are high damage close-range weapons for you to push with. I can imagine Bungie buffing the blast radius on rockets to deter players from using them at close ranges while also giving a slight global velocity nerf to make Snipers more competitive by default.

"Snipers and Shotguns will get some tweaks, making them much more viable in your power slot"

I guess that confirms it...weapon slot system is not changing...disappointing.

How can a weapon which requires you to hit a highly precise shot to a player's head to get a single kill be in the same slot as a weapon that has the potential to wipe out up to 4 players with one shot, just by shooting at the ground near them!?

I just don't understand this.

Even (for example) if you were to tweak aggressively and remove all flinch from snipers, that won't change the simple truth above.

What needs to be addressed is the Sins of the Past rocket spam and i only see that getting worse with the decrease in power ammo respawn timers.

The best we can hope for now is that rockets like Sins of the Past only get 1 rocket per brick (in PVP) to somehow reduce their effectiveness.

It should be obvious for every one, they first will try to fix it as it is now. Movin them to Energy slot or adding 4th slot would need rebalance whole game PvE and PvP. Every one who thinked it gonna happen soon is delusional.

Loadouts were mentioned on their huge dev update in january, so it was on the table at some point.

Id just like a comment on it. Its not like they can just revert to the old way since the way raid (for example) is built, you need dual primaries. So that leaves two outcomes, nothing is changing or something is.

Almost all the encounters are based on heavily favouring precision and spray weapons.

Baths for example, have a precision weapon to deal with ads and spray to fire on the yellow bars and pots. Gauntlet, if you’re doing the stationary strat you need a precision weapon and something else to handle ads during the build up. And during Calus, especially in the void you need a precision weapon for the psions/projections and a spray weapon (or coldheart) to deal with skulls.

All this has told us is that you all still don't understand the absolute failure of a weapons system you have implemented. Let me simplify it.

Snipers will -never- belong in the same class as rocket launchers. It can't work. It shouldn't have been tried. You failed the experiment. It's now time to abort.

Until you understand that, it is ENTIRELY irrelevant how much tweaking you do to them. Without just making rocket launchers absolute garbage arbitrarily, you cannot make snipers work in the power slot. You also can't make shotguns work without making them "broken."

Something feeling great in your playtests should be an indication of, basically, nothing. I'm sure te new weapons system "felt great" when it was tested before launch, and yet as we all know, it's fucking terrible.

You guys are absolutely killing us. Tell someone to tell the experience designers to stop reinterpreting our wants and needs. We know what we want because WE PLAYED DESTINY 1. WE WANT THAT. I mean for the love of christ we're trying to make your jobs easier by being as explicit as possible.

Well, this is disappointing. I guess we'll hear more about it tomorrow. It's one of my biggest issues with the game, so if it sticks that'll be for me and D2.

It's funny how much fun I'm having going back and play D1, specially with Mayhem Clash in a 6vs6 game. I just wonder who idea to just make pvp into 4vs4 AND convince a whole company that it was a good idea. Probably the one in charge on marketing D2.

Snipers, Shotguns, and Fusions have no place in the Power Weapon slot if the team seeks to keep the weapon system as it is. There is no incentive to ever switch from either Curtain Call or Sins of the Past in your power slot regardless of if you're doing PvE or PvP because they give good results with very little effort!

Snipers, Shotguns, and Fustions need to be moved out from the Power slot and divided up into the Kinetic and Energy weapon slots. (with Fusions being locked to the Energy slot due to the nature of the weapon type) This would allow a much larger variety of weapon load-outs and increase player choice in how they want their guardian to play. People would love this change!

Move sniper, fusions and shotgun to energy slot. I am really at a lost why they're still in a heavy slot. Picking up "heavy ammo" to use a sniper or shotgun to kill someone that can't defend themselves isn't satisfying on either end... Any buffs you give to them to compete with rockets will make it even less satisfying. Let me be powerful all the time not just when I happen to stumble upon heavy ammo. Let players become gods again at sniping and shotgunning.

Thanks for the communication here on the sub dmg its really appreciated. I ran into this type of situation at work recently that coincidentally lined up with whats going on in the destiny community. Its not that you folks aren't working hard, you are busting your asses off trying to make this the best damn version of destiny possible. When deadlines aren't going to be met however its super important that you guys do exactly what you are doing: communicate what the issue is, why you aren't hitting the date, and what the path forward looks like. Really happy to see this type of communication.

At this point I think we need some kind of information about the sandbox update, even it’s hand-written on a napkin. Every day I care less and less about Destiny, so some hard (or even just firm-ish) facts about the sandbox update would at least keep me interested.